Faculty at U of North Texas in Dallas Will Have to Re-Apply for Their Jobs

By the end of this week, all 38 faculty members on the University of North Texas' Dallas Campus will have received letters notifying them that their contracts, which expire in May, will not be renewed.

They will be given the option to reapply, along with applicants from across the country, to a "new" institution, the University of North Texas at Dallas....

In September the Dallas campus will become a free-standing unit instead of a branch of the flagship, in Denton, prompting the name change and the job-reapplication process....

"We all came to Dallas to build a university," one former employee, who asked not to be identified, wrote in an e-mail message. "The focus for faculty was to recruit, provide service to the university, and grow enrollment so that UNT-Dallas could become a reality," the former employee wrote. "Now that the university has reached stand-alone status, many are frustrated and feel their worth is not valued," because now they will have to apply and compete for jobs they have held for years.

People are particularly upset, the employee wrote, because originally they put aside research activities to work on service and teaching in order to build the institution. But the new tenure-track job descriptions require research expertise, so it seems as if the university has changed the ground rules. "Time and energy spent focused on teaching and service is now seemingly useless," the employee wrote....

Two branches of the Texas A&M University system have also gone out on their own in recent months, but jobs on those campuses were transferred over, and faculty members did not have to reapply.

John Ellis Price, vice chancellor of North Texas and president-designate of the Dallas location, said the university's legal-staff members had told him that such a transfer was not an option for his campus.